


In Terms of "Maybe"

by HOLOMANCER



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Other, Season: Twilight Mirage, Twilight Mirage Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 21:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17815958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HOLOMANCER/pseuds/HOLOMANCER
Summary: Grand Magnificent can't speak on what he feels. Sometimes, neither can Signet.





	In Terms of "Maybe"

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first real fan-fiction in probably 10 years or so. If you like it, please let me know! I'm not finished with Twilight Mirage yet, so if anything seems off character wise or plot wise that's probably why, haha! Also I'm bad with tense language, so if anything's off feel free to hit me up about it :o)

There is an “if then” in all lives. Most are small and largely insignificant; “If I hadn’t drank coffee, then I would have slept better,” “If I had rose from bed at sun-up I would have caught the transit on time,” and “If I hadn’t of gone running I would have never twisted my ankle.” The original situation is an “if”, which leads to a “then”, which leads on and on in perpetuity; the “then,” in every life, is forever the twin to “is.”

If Grand Magnificent had gone to bed late and woke up early, then perhaps he would have slogged his way through the mission’s directive with as much dignity mustered and still managed to miss an interaction with Independence. If Grand had, maybe, aligned himself differently from the beginning-- affiliating himself with people like Signet and Tender and Fourteen Fifteen (and later, Belgard: whose curiosity was so inhuman and yet so intimate, painfully like a God made by mortals (but not, because other Gods made this God))-- maybe he would have been in a different place at a different time, fighting Volition’s Axiom Ebullience, or recruiting during the Week Long war, or something else that Grand Magnificent could come to later, romantically, like a painter appreciating his work over the canvas, thinking: “I must have done something right.”

Maybe then. But Grand went to bed early, woke early, fashioned on his vest and cloak and buckled into his boots with such meticulousness; who would have known those same hands (burned, cut, calloused hands) would cradle that white, reflective creation? Independence’s mind like a coiling snake pressing against his amygdala, pons, medulla; until he was all breathing and panic and isolation. But Him. Him and Him. Grand, in this “then”, dies with all the stars burning inside of him. Independence's last word is a sigh, but in it Grand heard Him say, “I don’t want to die alone.”

Grand Magnificent doesn’t remember these lives; these “if then” alternate realities are effervescent in the wake time and don’t register at all with the eyes open. Grand just lived onward with his guilt, becoming all of it at once and then letting it overflow from his body.

~~~~~~

Signet and Belgard walked the ruins of a garden on the Bye & Bye. This was almost directly after the Week-Long War ended and the bureaucracy of negotiation began, and Signet was starting to feel as though her skin was slowly beginning to tighten. The feeling thrummed between them. 

Belgard was meditating on something, Signet could tell. Her scaled shields shuddered across the intimate curve of her neck, like her hackles were raising and falling with each parting thought. Even so large, she stepped gently around plants and various animals (who, having grown accustomed to human companionship, slipped around their feet, at ease as they went on rebuilding), and touched the flat, waxy leaf of a broken tree. Her hands, like vibrating fish skin, firmly but tenderly picked the fallen tree up from their path and righted it. There was the ease of something rebuilding, echoing against Signet’s still body. When Belgard turned to continue on the trail, the tree was splinted and healing.  
All unconscious; the Divine Belgard was focused on other things, things harder to define, things that she was trying to work into words. The feeling pulsed into Signet, who stopped to examine Belgard from behind. Her wings fluttering, body rippling and shifting in color; blue, gold, red. Giving all light back. 

This “then” should not exist, but it does still. The one where Belgard was not salvaged from the wreckage; a throbbing heart of vibrancy lying down in the shade of the battlefield (and later, its Excerpt finding the wreckage: uncrying, unmoving, unfeeling. Lying down into apathy). Signet becomes something unyielding in this “then.” A creature of no comfort, but one that gives and gives in perpetuity; just as her Divine had upon death. 

“Can divines really die?” Someone will ask her, and she will respond-- unwavering --

“Yes.” 

Some part of Signet knew this. She could see this overlay like a mirage across Belgards back, that beating heart falling from gravity into sand, surprisingly small (and yet so large). Signet shook her head, and touched Belgard across her hip before she could move on. Belgard stopped, shuttering against her fingertips (and it felt like the ocean made out of polished, moving pearl), and overlaid Signet’s hand with her own.


End file.
